As I mentioned  yesterday, May is a big month. My mom is super-busy, so when she suggested we go out to celebrate, I set aside a night to have dinner and catch up. Though my family has plenty of favorite restaurants, it’s fun to try new places, so my mom made a reservation at Boulud Sud on the Upper West Side. It was such a nice treat!

I have no idea what our server’s name was, but he was so awesome about recommending tree-nut free dishes (and offering to prep a few things without them) and convincing us to split a bottle of rose wine. The whole meal was excellent—the perfect celebratory mother-daughter dinner.

To start, we shared these sea urchin and crab tartines. Then we each had a gorgeous salad with artichoke puree, fennel, and celery—so freaking good! For our entree, we both got the grilled loup de mer and shared some charred broccoli rabe and roasted cauliflower. Everything had this subtle lemon flavor going on that was out of this world.

In the past few months, I’ve noticed that sometimes I actually really like having cheese for dessert instead of something sweet. Funny how your palate changes over time. In either case, though I can’t remember which cheeses we got, they were both outstanding.

What was your last restaurant meal?